Find the Path & Shadow Walk

[Voadam]

Can you use Find the Path and then Shadow Walk to move significant distance in the right direction or to get to a destination?

Find the Path
Divination
Level: Brd 6, Clr 6, Drd 6, Knowledge 6, Travel 6
Components: V, S, F
Casting Time: 3 rounds
Range: Personal or touch
Target: You or creature touched
Duration: 10 min./level
Saving Throw: None or Will negates (harmless)
Spell Resistance: No or Yes (harmless)
The recipient of this spell can find the shortest, most direct physical route to a specified destination, be it the way into or out of a locale. The locale can be outdoors, underground, or even inside a maze spell. Find the path works with respect to locations, not objects or creatures at a locale. The location must be on the same plane as you are at the time of casting.
The spell enables the subject to sense the correct direction that will eventually lead it to its destination, indicating at appropriate times the exact path to follow or physical actions to take. For example, the spell enables the subject to sense trip wires or the proper word to bypass a glyph of warding. The spell ends when the destination is reached or the duration expires, whichever comes first. Find the path can be used to remove the subject and its companions from the effect of a maze spell in a single round.
This divination is keyed to the recipient, not its companions, and its effect does not predict or allow for the actions of creatures (including guardians).
Focus: A set of divination counters of the sort you favor.

Shadow Walk
Illusion (Shadow)
Level: Brd 5, Sor/Wiz 6
Components: V, S
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Range: Touch
Targets: Up to one touched creature/ level
Duration: 1 hour/level (D)
Saving Throw: Will negates
Spell Resistance: Yes
To use the shadow walk spell, you must be in an area of shadowy illumination. You and any creature you touch are then transported along a coiling path of shadowstuff to the edge of the Material Plane where it borders the Plane of Shadow. The effect is largely illusory, but the path is quasi-real. You can take more than one creature along with you (subject to your level limit), but all must be touching each other.
In the region of shadow, you move at a rate of 50 miles per hour, moving normally on the borders of the Plane of Shadow but much more rapidly relative to the Material Plane. Thus, you can use this spell to travel rapidly by stepping onto the Plane of Shadow, moving the desired distance, and then stepping back onto the Material Plane.
Because of the blurring of reality between the Plane of Shadow and the Material Plane, you can’t make out details of the terrain or areas you pass over during transit, nor can you predict perfectly where your travel will end. It’s impossible to judge distances accurately, making the spell virtually useless for scouting or spying. Furthermore, when the spell effect ends, you are shunted 1d10x100 feet in a random horizontal direction from your desired endpoint. If this would place you within a solid object, you are shunted 1d10x1,000 feet in the same direction. If this would still place you within a solid object, you (and any creatures with you) are shunted to the nearest empty space available, but the strain of this activity renders each creature fatigued (no save).
Shadow walk can also be used to travel to other planes that border on the Plane of Shadow, but this usage requires the transit of the Plane of Shadow to arrive at a border with another plane of reality. The transit of the Plane of Shadow requires 1d4 hours.
Any creatures touched by you when shadow walk is cast also make the transition to the borders of the Plane of Shadow.
They may opt to follow you, wander off through the plane, or stumble back into the Material Plane (50% chance for either of the latter results if they are lost or abandoned by you). Creatures unwilling to accompany you into the Plane of Shadow receive a Will saving throw, negating the effect if successful.

 

[Piratecat]

No. Here's the key, from Find the Path....

The location must be on the same plane as you are at the time of casting.

It stops working as soon as you leave the Prime, although it would restart as soon as the shadowwalk spell ended and you came back to your own plane.

 

[Starglim]

edit: OK, considering maze , it works exactly the opposite way to what I thought earlier. Maze is an extradimensional space, but your destination is outside that space. So you do all your pathfinding in the same plane where you cast the spell, even though your destination can be on another plane. In order for find the path to help with shadow walk (if in fact it does help) you would have to cast it on the Plane of Shadow.


There is nothing in shadow walk that gives you greater benefit if you pick the right route. You travel at the same rate in the direction that you want to go regardless. The random deflection of your endpoint is entirely outside your control, so find the path doesn't help (it finds the shortest and most direct route that you could find, but doesn't let you do what shadow walk states to be impossible).

If the subject of find the path is not the caster of shadow walk and wanders off, there is no chance for him to find the caster's exit from the Plane of Shadow on his own. Find the path would lead him towards the closest other exit from the Plane of Shadow to the Prime Material, since that is the best path towards his destination.

 

[Voadam]

No. Here's the key, from Find the Path....

"The location must be on the same plane as you are at the time of casting."

It stops working as soon as you leave the Prime, although it would restart as soon as the shadowwalk spell ended and you came back to your own plane.

But when you cast it you are on the same plane. It specifies "at the time of casting." It does not specify that the destination must be on the same plane after you cast it.

 

[Voadam]

edit: OK, considering maze , it works exactly the opposite way to what I thought earlier. Maze is an extradimensional space, but your destination is outside that space. So you do all your pathfinding in the same plane where you cast the spell, even though your destination can be on another plane. In order for find the path to help with shadow walk (if in fact it does help) you would have to cast it on the Plane of Shadow.


There is nothing in shadow walk that gives you greater benefit if you pick the right route. You travel at the same rate in the direction that you want to go regardless. The random deflection of your endpoint is entirely outside your control, so find the path doesn't help (it finds the shortest and most direct route that you could find, but doesn't let you do what shadow walk states to be impossible).

If the subject of find the path is not the caster of shadow walk and wanders off, there is no chance for him to find the caster's exit from the Plane of Shadow on his own. Find the path would lead him towards the closest other exit from the Plane of Shadow to the Prime Material, since that is the best path towards his destination.

Here's why they want to use it, they have a specific named destination (the Lake of Golden Tears) but don't know where that location is, just that it is somewhere secluded. They plan to cast FTP on the arcane trickster illusionist in the party who will then (on the prime material plane) cast SW and travel at the increased rate in the right direction while under the guidance of FTP. Rinse and repeat until they get there.

 

[Starglim]

But when you cast it you are on the same plane. It specifies "at the time of casting." It does not specify that the destination must be on the same plane after you cast it.

It's badly written, but considering maze, I read "the location" as meaning the same as "the locale" in the first paragraph, that is, the place where you gain the spell's benefit.

 

[Starglim]

Here's why they want to use it, they have a specific named destination (the Lake of Golden Tears) but don't know where that location is, just that it is somewhere secluded. They plan to cast FTP on the arcane trickster illusionist in the party who will then (on the prime material plane) cast SW and travel at the increased rate in the right direction while under the guidance of FTP. Rinse and repeat until they get there.

The arcane trickster would have to cast shadow walk and lead the party in to the Plane of Shadow. Then the cleric (?) would have to cast find the path on the arcane trickster within Shadow. The trickster could make his way through Shadow towards the Lake, assuming that the GM accepted the name "Lake of Golden Tears" as a sufficient description of the destination for find the path to work at all.

If, for some strange reason, the shadow walk ended before either reaching the lake or running out of find the path (which has a much shorter duration), the remaining find the path duration would not work in the Prime Material plane but would work if he entered the Plane of Shadow again.